


The Start of an Age

by WereAllDeadInDevilTown



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Cancer, Death, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Modern Era, Musicals, One Shot, Pain, Pregnancy, Reincarnation, Sickness, Six the musical - Freeform, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:00:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22904365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WereAllDeadInDevilTown/pseuds/WereAllDeadInDevilTown
Summary: In order for the Six wives of King Henry the Eighth to form their iconic modern-day pop band and travel the world telling their stories, they first had to overcome death and be brought back to life. The details of their reincarnation, and what that process entailed for each of them respectively, is something seldom spoke about.Perhaps this is for the best.AKA the fic in which each of the six queens is reincarnated in pairs of two, and their causes of death work backwards from the time they're brought back until they're well again.Warning VERY gory, particularity when it comes to the beheaded cousins. xx
Comments: 37
Kudos: 219





	The Start of an Age

It was a gloomy and rainy day in mid-January, as so many days in England tended to be, when the first of six deceased Tudor queens were reincarnated. Looking back on it with scrutiny the date seemed to hold no real significance to any of the queens in particular, not one that any of them could entirely pin-point anyway. Maybe like so much of their sudden and unexplained return some five hundred years later it was simply random, like the higher power which had, for some inexplicable reason, felt compelled to allot them more time on this green earth simply pulled an insignificant day of the year out of a jar and decided “ _ this is the one _ ”. 

It weighed on Catherine’s mind much more than most of the other queens she felt, the way they simply defied all logic or reason just by existing the way they did. Catherine Parr had always been a very logical and factual person, she was a beacon of knowledge and someone who strove for information. This was something that had always made her stand out in her past life, it was something she had to make a conscious effort to hide. In this new life, it was the first thing she knew to embrace. Many nights she stayed up well past dawn, pooling over primary and secondary sources from the 15th century by candlelight at her desk, searching for answers in every scripture and psalm when there was more likely than not no answers to be found. It drove her crazy that in every sense of the word, the six queens were an _enigma_ in this new and foreign world. 

There may have been no scientific explanation for the position Cathy found herself in that January 17th, when just moments before for an indiscernible period of time she had most certainly been completely and entirely dead. Unlike most of the other queens who came back unaware of having died, or entirely discombobulated, Catherine remembered the feeling of dying well. It was one she had a hard time describing in her writings on many a sleepless night, this sensation human beings simply couldn’t put proper words to. 

It was sort of like being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, she would write in the margins of her papers. It was like a candle someone had blown out but still burned, sizzling embers and smoldering wicks. It was the feeling of being under so many sticky bed sheets you couldn’t escape if you tried, like not being able to breath but also not needing to. Cathy oftentimes wondered if more than anything else  _ this _ unexplainable unworldly experience of death was what bonded the queens far more than their ex husband ever would. 

Explanation or not though, Catherine Parr woke up that stormy and somber morning for the first time in some few hundred odd years. And perhaps even stranger yet, she was laying in bed beside somebody she would soon come to know as Jane Seymour. 

Cathy felt several things hit her the very moment her eyes hastily flew open upon her unceremonious arrival in the twenty-first century, the first of which was that the world was so much brighter than she ever recalled it being. Catherine squinted violently at the albeit cloud-shrouded sunlight streaming in from the window beside her head, the cobwebs on her mind slowly creeping away as she registered the feeling of a bed beneath her different from her own. When was the last time she’d seen nor felt daylight? Even the several days leading up to her death she’d been surrounded by darkness, her bedroom thick and heavy and stuffy with the scent of mourning. 

The second thing she realized, which followed very quickly after, was that she was in immense pain. Shooting, aching pain, the kind of pain you only feel once, the kind of pain you only feel when you're dying. When your body is failing you and knows it, sending signals of waving white flags up to your brain as the pain swaddles you up like a baby and carries you off to someplace else far, far away. Lastly, which followed almost immediately after the first two realizations, Catherine realized that the woman pressed firmly to her side in this bed for two was sobbing incoherently. 

Upon discovering this last bit of information, even as her entire body was being shaken with a familiarly clawing, gnawing sort of pain, Catherine immediately tried to sit up and help or at least console the woman beside her. But of course, the minute she moved to do so, the pain in her pelvic region reached its peak, and she had to double over sinking back into the mattress beneath her as her knees rose to tuck into her chest and were prohibited by her belly. A pained groan of her own slipped out between pale, chapped lips, and as her hands flew to grasp her enlarged and swollen stomach all of the memories came flooding back to her. 

It was like suddenly a sixteen wheeler slammed in a head-on collision with her temple, and the visions of her old bedchambers flitted in around the very corners of her eyes. This was precisely where she had been in her final moments of life, lying limply in a bed not nearly as comfortable as the one she found herself in now, clutching herself as her wrecked body was wracked with fever symptoms. No one but a doctor had been by her side as she slipped away, no one had held her hand. She had given birth a few days prior to a healthy baby girl. Seven pounds three ounces, hair and eyes dark like her own. She hadn’t gotten to hold her, her baby. Or at least she didn’t remember holding her. Had she been worth it? Worth dying then, worth dying again now? She had wanted to name her  _ Mary _ . Had they at least named her Mary? 

Catherine Parr would spend the weeks following her resurgence in the world researching lots of things, but most importantly researching everything she could about her daughter. She would fill notebook after notebook with bullet points, would read a million history books just to highlight the lines about her. She would still be dissatisfied with the lack of knowledge there was on her only child, the lack of factual information as if that could make up for lost time, could somehow satiate her grief and longing. She would find a lot of solace in the other queens who lost children, would cling to Jane even when she couldn’t look her in the eye.    
At least they had named her Mary. 

The room smelled of death, Catherine knew the smell well. It was good to know that even in 500 years, this was something that hadn’t changed. It smelled like literal rotting flesh and sweat, like a 1000 degrees of suffering, which did nothing to help with the nausea that was beginning to prick Catherine’s chilled skin. For a fleeting moment Cathy almost longed for the calm and cold reprieve of death, the silent darkness which had enveloped her for so long yet felt like mere seconds. Just as she felt herself slipping back into that embrace of the ebbing blackness at the very fringes of her mind, she also felt the woman beside her, who truthfully Cathy had nearly forgotten about despite her loud and anguished weeping, grip her hand and hold it tightly in her own. 

Something about the woman’s touch felt like a jolt of electricity, and Catherine had never felt such clarity as in that moment that although she had no idea what was happening to her nor what was to come she knew someone with much more power than her had a plan. Both women were sweaty but freezing at the same time, squirming side by side in sheets that felt like needles against them. But in grabbing her hand Catherine was regrounded, brought back to the present where she was dying but not dead. Did this mean that the woman beside her had died once before as well? 

Panting heavily and still clutching her extended stomach with one hand Cathy opened her eyes again, this time allowing them to adjust to the light as she surveyed the room. She had no clue where she was, genuinely. But it was certainly not the castle she’d died in, nor familiar to her in any sort of way. In between labored breaths, the woman beside her finally spoke softly.   
“W-who are you?”   
Her voice could be described as nothing other than motherly. Catherine carefully twisted her head to look at the woman laying beside her, whose voice she didn’t recognize but sounded so laden with pain she immediately felt sorry for her, even as her own insides twisted like knives. 

The woman, who wasn’t looking at Catherine but instead had her eyes squeezed shut tightly in pain, was not someone Cathy thought she knew upon first glance. Her skin was pale with sickness and slick with sweat, as she was sure her own skin was as well. Her blond hair was matted down to her forehead, but fell down in waves around her shoulders prettily, and she wore a thin, white dressing gown with pretty lace and ribbons to signify her wealth. The most noticeable thing about the woman however, was the way her stomach swelled out from her abdomen as if she were with child or had very recently given birth just as Catherine’s was. It became clear then to Parr that the two women were going through the exact same thing, something the woman in the new modern day would be able to recognize as childbed fever. 

And they weren’t simply phantom pains either, judging by the thick pool of putrid blood and discharge seeping through the bottom of both women’s dressing gowns. Looking down at herself Cathy was wearing the same outfit she’d died in, a baby blue nightgown with small buttons down the center. Now she was more confused than ever. With very little poise or composure, Cathy forced herself to speak.    
“My name is Catherine. With a  _ C _ .”    
  
The hand holding her suddenly squeezed even more tightly at the name, and she rubbed the strange woman’s knuckles gently with her thumb. Catherine had always been told she had a rather high pain tolerance, so although she probably should have been screaming and writhing as the woman beside her was she instead simply bit her cheek, digging her nails into her stomach and allowing her body to drift into that comfortable pool of numbness it did when in need of escape. Catherine was very good at leaving her body, exquisite at soldering through pain. Carefully with her legs Cathy gathered some of the extra blanket entangling her calves, and squeezed it with her thighs so as to stop the bleeding from between her legs as best she could. If she just looked at this as another problem to solve, took herself out of the equation, she could manage almost anything. 

She watched carefully as the woman beside her used her free hand to rub the top of her belly lovingly in little circles, even though she was certain she had already given birth to her child. It was probably just instinctual. Cathy felt a pang of sadness at how good of a mother the woman beside her would have made, instead totally deflated literally and figuratively beside her now, on the brink of death. Or were they on the brink of life? 

“Do you know where my baby is?”   
The woman’s voice was soft, and kind, and upon asking her question the woman finally opened her eyes which were pricked with tears. They were a striking blue, and Cathy felt briefly as if there were something familiar about them before answering shakily.    
“No. I’m sorry.”   
A tear ran down the woman’s cheek as her eye’s met Catherine’s. They stared at each other a moment, the blond woman’s eyebrows knitted in confusion.   
“Do you know where the doctor is?”   
  
Catherine longed to say something comforting or reassuring, but she simply couldn’t take the woman’s pitiful expression, nor her apparent lack of understanding of the situation. Not that Catherine understood it all that much herself, but she was with it enough to at least understand she had died and now was somehow back to life, or at least for a brief while no longer dead, and furthermore was not at all in the same place she’d been when she passed. The woman beside her’s final days must have been much more foggy than her’s.

And Catherine was right in thinking this. Jane’s final days had been plagued with fever induced hallucinations. Even now she saw a million colorful images flashing before her. A doctor with a kind smile, Henry looking eager and impatient, a lively baby boy with a thick head of fair hair and  _ her _ eyes. She could feel a million things, the unimaginable pain of a huge empty stomach, a hand ripping away from her own, a cold compress on her forehead. She could hear someone weeping over her body, Henry shouting out in the hallway, her baby coughing.    
  
And then there was darkness. Lots of darkness. 

And then finally there was this woman beside her, and she was the only thing that felt real. Catherine was her name. Catherine was real. So Jane clung onto her, she clung onto her with everything she had as the pain hit her in wave after wave. She didn’t want to disappear again with the fever dreams, she wanted to be real.   
“I’m going to go try and find him.”

With this Catherine tried to let go of the woman’s sweaty hand in her’s, and carefully tried once again to sit up. Not only was Jane not letting go of her hand though, Cathy had no choice but to finally let out a sharp and pained whale as pain knocked the very wind out of her. Immediately she had no choice but to lay down again, and she realized she was helpless. It was silent for a few minutes as the two women laid there, immobile, squeezing one another and crying out every few seconds, waiting for the phantom cramps and contractions to subside. 

When Cathy at last spoke again she sounded weak, and tired, and her voice was hardly at all above a whisper partially because she was only half alive and partially because she was terrified to voice her own thoughts out loud.   
“Did you die too?”   
And just like that, Jane too understood. She understood that she was dead, or  _ died _ , at least. She gave birth to Edward and died, died in the days to follow. Henry had been by her side and had wept. He had held Edward near her and rocked him, let her whisper his name under her breath as she drifted away, let her believe that he truly loved her to the very end with good doctors from all over Europe and crocodile tears when they both knew it was a farce. She had been a fool. And now she was paying the price. 

“Are we dying  _ again, _ right now?”   
Even if Jane hadn’t realized it, she acknowledged that she too had been reincarnated in that sentence, and even with the fever raging on Catherine suddenly felt then much more sane. She sighed in relief.    
“I don’t think so. I think, I think I can almost sit up. I think it’s getting better.”   
Jane hadn’t noticed it before, because the pain had been so unbearable, but Catherine was right. They were getting better, little by little. They weren’t dying again, they were coming back to life albeit at a painstakingly slow rate. It was absolute torture. Cathy watched worriedly as the woman beside her got visibly more upset, larger tears snaking their way down her face as she shook her head vehemently. 

“No, I don’t want this. I-I’m meant to be dead, if my baby Edward isn’t here then I don’t want this!”    
Baby Edward? Catherine’s breath caught in her throat.    
“You’re Jane Seymour, aren’t you?”   
And that was the end of an era but the start of an age. 

* * *

  
It wouldn’t be another three and a half months in early May until another two queens were brought back, Jane and Cathy sometimes worrying they never would in the offtime they spent adjusting to the new and strange world they’d been thrust into together. It took about six weeks for them to be entirely operational, physically at least, their fever working backwards as their stomachs shrunk back to a normal size and eventually they were well. When they both were strong enough to descend the large staircase to the living room below for the first time, they’d done it together, hand in hand. 

The house they’d both appeared in, a large two-story detached house with some definite age on it, was bought in its entirety and made out to a Catherine Parr. The two women had discovered this after about a month of living there, when they began to wonder if someone was going to come home and discover them living in their house and decided to do some more investigation. They didn’t know how this was possible, the house being in their possession with no action of their own, but they also didn’t know how it was possible that they were alive and well in modern day England, so it was clear that a myriad of things were yet to make sense. 

The house did have six bedrooms though, with one on the ground level, four on the first level and one in the attic which could easily be made accommodating. Upon this discovery both Jane and Cathy were pretty secure in the idea that soon enough they would not be sharing the sizable space alone. This was a terrifying and simultaneously comforting speculation, the idea of several other queens on their way to join them, their exact date or time of arrival completely unknown. Of course the other queens inexplicable arrival at all was simply a suspicion, but in May these suspicions would at last be confirmed. 

Jane had always been an early riser, so although Cathy was more often than not awake in her bedroom still studying or writing, it was she who emerged first from her bedroom across the hall when the sun had just risen for a warm cup of tea and breakfast. This morning was no different, as Jane heated up the kettle on the hob Cathy was hunched over her desk trying to sort out one peculiar thing about their return, as if certain aspects of it could possibly be regarded as more peculiar than others. Catherine was trying to sort out their ages. Although they returned with the same afflictions they’d been plagued with when they passed it seemed, they were not at all the same ages as when they had passed. Catherine had been 36 years old when she died in 1548, and Jane 29 in 1537. Here and now however, Catherine estimated her age to be around her early to mid twenties, and Jane the same.

Although she wanted to believe this had something to do with higher powers or the universe or whomever had brought them back deeming them worthy of more time, she theorized that maybe it was meant to be an age which held some sort of significance to them. Catherine thought she was making a breakthrough in this idea, when suddenly she heard a very urgent and rapid tapping of knuckles at her bedroom door. Shakily she stood, trying to regroup her thoughts as she opened the door only a crack and then all the way at the sight of Jane still in her pajamas, clearly rattled by something. 

Jane was pale in the face and gripping her teacup so tightly to her chest Cathy feared she might break it. It was a look Cathy had not grown very familiar with, unlike the woman’s usual warm smile, or slightly perplexed look when something newly invented since their death puzzled her. Quickly, she set a hand on the woman’s shoulder. Although they, truthfully, spent most days avoiding one another than not in fear of awkwardness, anyone could tell the two queens were deeply bonded and cared for one another in a way unimaginable to most. They may not have been close in the most conventional sense of the word, but they cared for each other deeply.

Jane took a deep breath, staring down at her tea.   
“I think two more are back.” 

* * *

When Catherine of Aragon and Anna of Cleves opened their eyes for the first time in several hundred years, they were not expecting to be so weak they couldn’t even lift their heads from off their pillows. As the groaning ruminating from the first floor bedroom beside the kitchen escalated to screaming the minute both Cathy and her entered the room Jane  _ had _ to excuse herself. Given the nature of her death Jane was simply petrified of illness, which always seemed to win out against her natural affinity for helping and healing others. The minute they opened the bedroom door and were hit with the smell of sweat and vomit, Catherine gave her a look that told her to go back upstairs. Jane didn’t have it in her to argue.

As Cathy entered and surveyed the room, she couldn’t help but think with only mild bitterness how these new queens had no idea how lucky they were to come back second. Unlike her and Jane, they wouldn’t be nearly as confused and alone. Maybe that’s why the universe gave Jane and her so much time between their resurrection and their’s, because they were now carrying the burden of properly ushering new queens into this strange and foreign world with a sort of confidence which only comes with time. 

On the other hand though, Cathy was fortunate too. In the time given to her Catherine had made it her goal to learn as much about the other queens that came before her as possible, and their deaths in particular in order to prepare for this. Looking down at the two women pressed back to back in the queen bed immediately she recognized one as Catherine of Aragon, King Henry’s first wife. Even by the time Catherine had begun living in the castle with Henry, well after who many people considered the  _ true queen’s _ death, there were still portraits of her in several areas of the castle less frequented by the King. She resembled these portraits only very mildly, 15th century portraiture not having been known for its accuracy, but it was enough to make the older woman seem familiar in Catherine’s mind. 

The woman to the left of Aragon, who Cathy could identify only by the fact that her head was attached to her body, had to have been Anna Von Cleves. Similarly to her Anna’s complexion was far darker than any portrait ever portrayed, clearly a person of African American descent. Her short haircut looked surprisingly modern, at least in comparison to Aragon beside her who looked like someone straight from a history textbook. Aragon one could clearly tell she was of Latin descent, her black curls framing her pained expression and tanned skin glistening with sweat. Even now they both looked beautiful. 

For several moments Cathy simply stood there at the foot of the two women’s bed, unsure of herself. Neither woman seemed to have noticed her presence really, or if they had they weren’t acknowledging her at least. Briefly she wondered if she should go try and rope Jane back into helping her out, seeing as she was the much more...nurturing one out of the pair. Catherine, for lack of a better term, was rather awkward. It wasn’t helped by the fact that she was staring down at two of the most powerful and affluent women in all of English history. Seeing them in such a state as they were now, gripping at their own craped skin and weeping into the mattress, simply felt wrong- like she was seeing something she wasn’t meant to see.    
  
“Mary? Is that you?”   
At the sound of Aragon’s voice, scarily calm as her own hands were clawing at her chest, Catherine jumped into action and moved to her bedside. With her eyes still closed, Aragon limply raised her wrist to only just above the bed, gesturing for someone to hold her hand. Hesitantly Catherine took the woman’s hand in her own, rubbing it gently as she knelt down by her side. She didn’t know how morally right it was to let the confused woman believe she was her long gone daughter Mary, but she also couldn’t possibly fathom bringing any more pain and longing to the room than what currently inhabited it. 

Carefully studying her face, Cathy noted how she was much younger than fifty, having died the oldest out of all of them back when she first passed in the 16th century. Maybe she was thirty, she thought, mindlessly taking the older woman’s empty hand in hers to prevent her from grasping too roughly at her steadily convulsing chest. It was painfully clear, even if Cathy hadn’t researched it all prior to her arrival,that Catherine of Aragon had passed from heart cancer.

“I thought you weren’t coming, I was worried he wouldn’t let you come see me.”    
Catherine shushed the woman quietly, shaking a little as she examined the many rings she was rubbing with the pad of her thumb. Unsure of what to say, Cathy merely brushed some stray hairs out of the woman’s face, sure that later down the line she would be unbelievably embarrassed about the display of vulnerability she’d shown the strange woman. And she would be, but more so Aragon would be undeniably grateful in a way she would never be able to successfully convey to the final queen. 

“I think I’m dying, Mary.”   
Shudders ran down her spine as the woman before her, portrayed in portraiture and statuettes all around England as this powerful almost Goddess-like being, wept for herself. She looked so lifeless, so helpless. And yet so young, which made the scene feel just that much more wrong. Catherine carefully, and with great care, wiped tears from her face.    
“No, you’re going to be alright. Trust me, it’ll be alright.”    
If Aragon then realized from her voice that the woman at her side wasn’t her daughter, she showed no sign of it, in fact squeezing her hand harder. 

Catherine admired the woman’s dressing gowns, all satin and silk, even if only to give her eyes something to do other than roam Aragon’s heart wrenching face where blood caked the dried corners of her mouth. They sat like that for a long time the two of them, Cathy down on her knees with her hands intertwined with the woman whose eyes remained closed as she groaned between clenched teeth. Every few minutes or so when things got too quiet Jane would cautiously peek her head into the room, offering Parr a cup of tea silently. Catherine would politely decline and the caring woman would then recede once again, allowing space for the three queens. This went on until, finally, Anna resurfaced. 

“Where the  _ scheiße  _ am I.”    
Unlike the other three, Anna came back seemingly all at once. Where Aragon was bordering unconsciousness and very much confused as to where she was and who she was with, the raspy voice coming from Anna of Cleves on the opposite side of the bed sounded much more aware and awake, bordering on alarm and panic. Maybe even anger. Still holding onto Aragon’s hands, Cathy tried her best to formulate a proper response to that, unexplained fear plaguing her words in the form of a stutter. 

“You’re in 21st c-century England.”   
Nothing was said in response to that. There was a long pause and Cathy thought maybe Anna had succumbed to unconsciousness yet again, when with much struggle and labored breathing, Anna maneuvered her body to face Catherine on Aragon’s side of the room. Her face was unbelievably pale, and moving was made hard by her legs which retained so much water they were nearly double in size. Her panting mimicked that of a dog’s, accompanied by a raspy wheeze, characteristic of someone with lung cancer. It took everything within the defeated woman not to begin having a coughing fit, her eyes meeting Catherine’s from over the sloping shape of Aragon.

“Nein, das kann ich nicht sein. Ich starb.”   
Catherine took a few minutes to try and process the sentence, having not brushed up on her limited German knowledge in some 500 years. Clearly seeing the woman’s struggle, Cleves quickly translated in her accented, usually booming voice. Right now, it sounded anything but  _ booming _ .    
“I said no, I can’t be. I died.”   
If she didn’t know any better, Catherine might have even said there was a glimmer of a smile in Cleves’ eye as she educated her. Catherine wondered how lively the woman must normally be, if so much light was able to return to her in mere minutes.    
“So did I, and yet here we are. Someone, or some _ thing _ , brought us back.”   
“Then why do I feel like Hölle?”    


As if on cue Anne grunted in pain and grasped her abdomen, trying desperately to catch her breath from having talked so much. With every breath she took her chest burnt horribly, like she was swallowing fire. Her legs were so heavy and pulseless that she wished someone would sever her free from them, clip them off like a bird with lead weighted wings. Similarly Aragon, though having gone completely silent, was shivering terribly from her fever, the black and rotten heart in her chest like a worm-whittled apple trying desperately to keep blood flowing through her body. Though in some ways less outright painful than Catherine and Jane’s postpartum childbed fever, cancer was debilitating and drawn out. 

“Your cancer is going to work backwards until you’re well again. That’s what happened to me and Jane, anyway. She’s the queen who was brought back with me.”    
Anne, with her head resting against the pillow nodded weakly, her eyes open just enough to study the woman speaking calmly to her. She didn’t look very familiar, but something about her was trustworthy and soothing, it helped her manage the pain.    
“Wer bist du?” 

Catherine was unsure of how she should introduce the two queens who were in bed with one another, nor how she should introduce herself really. Aragon had died three years before Anna’s marriage with the King, but Anna was alive when Catherine married Henry, and even lived another eleven or so years following her death from giving birth to Mary. It eased her anxieties though that the woman, who even as she breathed her dying breaths, seemed so calm and kindly.    
“Catherine Parr.”

Cathy wasn’t sure the woman had heard her at first, that’s how little reaction the name stirred from the woman. Catherine would come to learn that this was simply how Anna of Cleves operated. She was very calculated, and calm, all of her responses well formulated and thought through if she could manage the time. When Cathy was about to reiterate herself, Anna breathed a long, painful breath.   
“I remember when you died.”    
There was another long moment of silence before she spoke again.   
“Lots of people were very sad. From where I watched in Germany, I thought the streets of England would flood with tears.”    
  
Maybe Anna had only said that to be kind to an old friend of sorts, to comfort Catherine when she seemed as though she needed it most. Regardless of her motives, this phrase was one Cathy would hold closely and deerly to her chest when times got rough and overwhelming, when she wondered what it was all for.    
“So that means this is real, huh?”   
  
Catherine waited with baited breath for the woman to continue, to show her reaction, to play her hand. What she hadn’t expected was for the queen to laugh bitterly.    
“Das Leben ist ein grausamer Witz.”   
Catherine didn’t need a translator for that phrase, it meant:   
“Life is a cruel joke.” 

* * *

  
To say the four queens were dreading the arrival of the last two departed wives of Henry the Eighth would have been a drastic understatement. There were many reasons for this, but most prominent of all was probably the nature of their deaths. While the other four queens had died horrible, painful, agonising deaths, none had been as downright gruesome and gory as Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard’s. The arbitrary rules which dictated the condition in which the other queens had arrived thus far surely were going to be bent in order to even allow the final two’s resurrection to be possible. Unless the two women really were going to suddenly appear in their house as gargling disembodied bloody limbs and body parts, which was an image none of the queens had the heart nor stomach to picture yet they all knew was plausible. 

Maybe the puppet master pulling strings to bring the six ex-wives back from the dead was also as perplexed by his own game, because it wasn’t until October 28th, several long months later, that either beheaded cousin was reanimated. By this time, over nine months since Jane and Cathy’s rebirth and six since Aragon and Cleve’s, all four women were in perfectly good health and as well adjusted to the modern day world as one could possibly expect of some five hundred year old British wives. All four of them had settled into their respective rooms and developed their respective routines, acting nearly like a well oiled machine. 

Jane was still the early riser of the bunch, though Aragon was always hot on the younger woman’s heels. Jane would rise just as the sun was, making her way downstairs to cook for the other three women she’d come to appreciate in very separate yet nearly equal ways. Aragon would situate herself at the kitchen table as Jane busied herself at the stove, typically with her nose deep in her Bible. Cathy, though usually awake early as well, typically wouldn’t desert her work and emerge from her room until Anna was waking up herself and leaving her own bedroom downstairs, entirely half asleep as she helped herself to a serving of breakfast. 

While each woman still had issues with one another in some way, butting heads regularly, they also knew that their very existence in this new world hinged off one another. They were cosmically connected in a way undeniable by even the most God-fearing of the six. Perhaps that was why, despite all of the anxiety and build-up, when they heard distinct shuffling from the normally empty attic that October morning, something within them compelled them to swallow their fear and greet the final two queens before they’d even finished eating. 

Cathy, somehow having established herself as a household leader of sorts, lead the rest of the queens up to the rickety stairs at the end of their first floor hallway which would lead to the attic. Before making her way up the steps, Cathy turned around to give the other three women behind her a look of deadly seriousness, trying to weed out those of them which couldn’t possibly handle the potentially sickening sights which awaited them up in the house’s rafters. Jane knew when she was being singled out, and looked only very briefly conflicted before she nodded sadly, swallowing hard as she took a seat at the bottom of the attic steps.    
“But if you need me, I’m here.” 

With that Catherine Parr, Catherine of Aragon, and Anna of Cleves began slowly and rather dramatically making their way up into the room built into the roof. The air was still and cold up here, where the central heating of the older house clearly wasn’t nearly as effective. Catherine shivered for the queens behind the door, grimacing at how icy and dead their bodies would surely feel. When she gripped the cold metal doorknob in her hand whilst thinking this, it surely didn’t help calm her anxieties, and she nearly turned back around before the sound of quiet weeping from behind the wooded frame gave her the final push she needed to enter the seldom explored final bedroom of the house. 

The gargling, trilling, irrigation like wet noises that filled the otherwise deathly quiet room were unlike any earthly sound the other three queens had ever had the displeasure of hearing. Both Katherine Howard and Anne Boleyn were laying side by side, shoulder to shoulder on top of the bed. Katherine’s eyes were skewed tightly shut as tears and snot streamed down her face, no doubt from the raw, unimaginable pain the two young queens must have been experiencing. Anne beside her looked much more awake, her eyes wide and bulging like a startled animal waiting to be put out of its misery. Where Kat’s arms were limp at her sides with merely her hands clenched into fists, Anne had her hands wrapped around her throat in a choking-like position, squeezing tightly in some sort of futile effort to combat the blood squirting from between her fingers. 

Both of the women had their heads attached to their bodies, but just barely, hanging on by maybe just a thread or two of flesh at the napes of their necks. Both of their mouths may have been gaping open and gasping vainly for air, but the sickening squishing noises that filled the room were emanating not from their mouths but from their necks, where air was escaping through the panickedly moving severed flaps of skin. Blood was spurting from their sliced jugular veins with such force that the various arteries and ligaments surrounding it were wiggling like fire hoses with too much water pressure. Seeing this the situation somehow felt less dire in a way, because it was so blatantly obvious straight away that there was so little any of the other three queens could possibly do to bring either borderline beheaded queen comfort. 

Even so, Anna and Aragon managed to jump quickly into action, Cathy following just after.   
“Can you lot hear us?”  
Anna knelt down beside Anne, speaking in a hushed voice just loud enough for both queens to potentially hear her. Even though Anne’s eyes were open they looked glassy and fogged over, like she was here but not _really_ , like maybe she wasn’t seeing the actual room she was in but rather an amalgamation of her past.   
“I need some wet rags, there’s too much blood seeping from out of Katherine’s eyes- I don’t think she’d be able to open them even if she wanted to.”   
Cathy had to try hard not to puke looking at the poor girl, unbelievable quantities of blood leaking from out of her mouth and still shut eyes, congeling in pools with her tears and mucus. She looked so much younger than Catherine ever would have been able to predict. She was just a kid.

“Anne, come on hon, just squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”    
Hearing Anna’s soothing voice allowed Catherine to move her legs again, knowing she had to do her part and help out. Aragon wiped at Katherine’s bloodied face with her own fingers as she waited for Catherine to come back with some washcloths for the two weeping queens. Following Anna’s lead Aragon balled up a blanket laying at the squirming queen’s feet and pressed it to her charge’s filleted neck. At feeling this sensation of pressure on her exposed innards Katherine suddenly jolted into action and attempted to weakly fight back, blindly swatting at Aragon who loomed over her in a panic.    
“Katherine sweetie stop, I’m trying to help you not hurt you. Let me help you.”    
  
But Katherine couldn’t hear the exasperated woman over her. She could hear the deafeningly loud sound of her own heart beating in her ears, the sound of blood flowing when for so long it had been dormant. She could hear the shuddering sound of plucking piano keys, of an out of tune loot. She could hear the shadow of fake laughter, of sensual whispering, of clanking chains and thundering screaming. But for the life of her she couldn’t hear the comforting cadence of Aragon’s words, a woman who defied all expectation when she let her guard down and spoke with one of the most honey-filled voices any of the other queens had ever heard. 

In fact it was this voice which had finally brought Anne back to the present. One moment she had been in the palace dungeon, wailing and struggling against guards as they laid her head down against the block. Next she was somewhere else entirely, and experiencing the greatest pain she had ever felt in her young life. When her eyes focused enough to make out a woman looming over her Anne could only assume it was an Angel, or God, or someone else waiting for her in the afterlife, because surely she couldn’t be alive. This burning, visceral pain wasn’t the sort of pain you just felt and then overcame, this was the sort of pain which had a short and concise purpose. 

But the familiar and grounding sound of Aragon’s voice managed to cut through all that like a hot knife, even if it was so much more soft and sweet than Anne could have ever fathomed it being. In most if not all of their prior interactions, Aragon’s voice had always been booming. Now, in this strange place Anne had never before seen, it seemed almost warm. The woman above her, who she could now more clearly make out, seemingly noticed Anne beginning to stir, because she released the pressure she was applying on Anne’s neck just a bit as she moved and cupped her face with one hand. The gesture made Anne feel whole.   
“You’re going to be okay. You’re going to live.”  
  
Anne tried to move her mouth to speak, _“Who are you? Where am I?”_ she would have asked, but she couldn’t, blood instead bubbling out of her throat as if she were some kind of horror movie fountain. This inability to speak was perhaps the greatest pain of all, because there was so much she wished to express, so much unbelievable confusion and fear. She was meant to be dead. Why wasn’t she dead? How was Aragon here and why was she being kind? Had Henry changed his mind?

Fortunately for Kat, she was so out of body that none of these same questions and concerns plagued her as they did her cousin. As she so often would be, even in the weeks and months following her return, Katherine was somewhere else entirely. Even in her youth she’d been told she was exceptionally gifted at drifting away. That was perhaps one of the only compliments she’d ever received from an authority figure, and even then it was hardly something to write home about. Even so, it had saved her more times than she could count, just as it did now when unbeknownst to her her trachea and thyroid gland were convulsing against a warm compress held to the bloody cross-section of her neck. 

Cathy watched somewhat helplessly from the foot of the bed as Anna and Aragon aided their respective queens, biting her thumbnail in thought after having returned with all the towels her and Jane could conjure up. How long could the two of them possibly hold out like this for? They were basically nothing more than reanimated corpses, defying all modern science and technology by being alive the way they were before her. The bed they were laying in was effectively a slip and slide now of thick blood and other numerous indiscernible chunks from their open wounds. It was easily the most horrific scene Cathy had ever been exposed to, and it was an image she wouldn’t soon forget. For months and months Catherine would look at the thick scars wrapping around the two queens necks and would see them the way they were now. When Kat would begin to cry she would immediately expect red blood rather than tears. It was just one of many things that needed time. 

The room fell uncharacteristically silent. Anne and Katherine stopped struggling for the most part, their gargles simmering to a low static-like white noise in the background. In the foreground Anna was singing softly under her breath to the both of them, it was some German song neither Cathy nor Aragon recognized but that soothed them as well. Her dark eyes were locked with Anne’s as she sung. They had been staring like that for several minutes now, and Anna stroked the beheaded queen’s cheek comfortingly between lines of her song. Part of her so desperately wanted to be by Kat’s bedside instead, seeing as she was one of the only familiar faces Anna recalled from their past life. Katherine had been a friend to her, or she could have been if her life hadn’t been unjustly  _ cut _ so short. Her death at the hands of an axeman had hurt her far more than she ever imagined it would. Especially since she’d seen it coming. Most people had, after Anne another death at the hands of husband Henry was far overdue. 

But even so, Anna knew Aragon’s rocky relationship with Anne, she knew that the woman was in no position to yet help and take care of the mistress who had ruined her marriage and queen status. She of course had no doubt that in time the two would be able to make amends and reconcile, if this cruel means of coming back to life had proven nothing else it was that time could heal all wounds, but as for now that pain was still raw. It was interesting for Anna to look deeply in the eyes of a young queen she had never before met but heard so much about. Anne Boelyn had a name that preceded her both then and now. But she didn’t look like a contriving witch, or anything Anna had preconceived. Right now she looked like a little girl who was absolutely petrified. It was a look Anna resonated with heavily. 

The moment Katherine Howard was able to muster enough strength to open her heavily weighted doe eyes was the moment the spell broke and the process began. As if like a flip had been switched somewhere far off, Aragon and Anna removed the towels from off the two queens when they could feel the squirming feeling beneath their fingers. When the wraps were pulled back it was clear that Katherine and Anne’s necks were beginning to slowly but surely close themselves back up, death working backwards the same way it had for the other four queens before them. It started at the nape of their necks, and looked as though a literal invisible needle and thread were crudely making the necessary incisions to close the gaping wound. It hurt just as much if not more than the previous existence they’d been experiencing, where their necks were simply open and continuously bleeding and burning with the edge of a blade. 

The warm hissing pain of the top and bottom halves of their neck meeting in the middle was so indescribably painful that instinctively Anne and Kat both moved to claw their own necks back open, but the queens acted quickly to restrain the two cousin’s flexed hands while their skin was reforming together. Cathy looked away from the sight, she had to. It was so unnatural and awful, the way their skin stretched and threatened to rip as some invisible force pulled it back to its original place. Anne, who was fully conscious now and able to comprehend what was going on to some extent, felt a mysterious tug on her heart listening to the girl beside her wail wetly, blood spattering across her face as she screamed and cried. In a moment of weakness, she moved to grab the other girl who was experiencing the same sensations as her, clenching her hand for dear life. 

Almost immediately Katherine’s curdling screams subsided to whimpers like magic. She didn’t know who the girl in green robes beside her was, but she knew she wanted to stay near her, which wasn’t a very common feeling for the teen. It was that same magnetic tug of affinity Jane and Cathy had felt when they first arrived back on Earth in similar circumstances, and the same for Anna and Aragon. In Anne and Kat’s case it had almost been even more powerful, not only because they were the only two blood related queens but because there was no talking involved, no other means of communicating outside of this unspeakable bond. 

Kat wanted her neck to hurry up and fully close, not only so that the unrelenting pain could subside but so that she could finally speak and all but beg the girl beside her to stay in bed with her, to hold her close and make her feel safe because she was petrified and feared she always would be. In the same breath however, part of Katherine knew she wouldn’t even have to ask. Never again would Kat really have to ask, Annie, and the other queens for that matter, would  _ always _ be there. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my first ever six related work of fanfiction!! I've been binge reading every possible story with these queens for several months, but just now found the time to actually create a work of my own, so hopefully you enjoyed it!! I'm a total sucker for the beheaded cousins and Kat in particular, so expect more work involving them and the rest of the girls soon if this does well! <3 Ty again, and feel free to leave a comment! I always try and reply xo


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